Interface-Controlled Antiferromagnetic Tunnel Junctions based on a metallic van der Waals A-type Antiferromagnet

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates all-collinear antiferromagnetic tunnel junctions using van der Waals AFM materials, achieving high TMR ratios and revealing a novel interface-driven spin-polarized transport mechanism for AFM spintronics.

Contribution

It introduces a new type of AFM tunnel junction with high TMR, showing that interface effects enable spin-dependent transport in AFM materials, a significant advancement over traditional ferromagnetic-based devices.

Findings

Achieved up to 75% TMR in AFMTJs.

TMR depends on AFM state, not FM transition.

Interface-driven spin-polarized transport mechanism identified.

Abstract

Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) are crucial components in high-performance spintronic devices. Traditional MTJs rely on ferromagnetic (FM) materials but significant improvements in speed and packing density could be enabled by exploiting antiferromagnetic (AFM) compounds instead. Here, we report all-collinear AFM tunnel junctions (AFMTJs) fabricated with van der Waals A-type AFM metal (Fe0.6Co0.4)5GeTe2 (FCGT) electrodes and nonmagnetic semiconducting WSe2 tunnel barriers. The AFMTJ heterostructure device achieves a tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) ratio of up to 75% in response to magnetic field switching. Our results demonstrate that the TMR exclusively emerges in the AFM state of FCGT, rather than during the AFM-to-FM transition. By engineering FCGT electrodes with either even- or odd-layer configurations, volatile or non-volatile TMR could be selected, consistent with an entirely interfacial effect. TMR in the even-layer devices arose by N\'eel vector switching. In the odd-layer devices, TMR stemmed from interfacial spin-flipping. Experimental and theoretical analyses reveal a new TMR mechanism associated with interface-driven spin-polarized transport, despite the spin-independent nature of bulk FCGT. Our work demonstrates that collinear AFMTJs can provide comparable performance to conventional MTJs and introduces a new paradigm for AFM spintronics, in which the spin-dependent properties of AFM interfaces are harnessed.